Wonder Woman (TV Series) Knockout (1977) User Reviews

Intriguing episode

[coltras35 · 7/10 · 12 April 2022]

When Steve Trevor mysteriously disappears, Wonder Woman finds herself in Los Angeles and struggling with a band of unscrupulous terrorists plotting to hijack the World Trade Conference.

An intriguing episode that shift slightly in political territory. There's less of the fantasy element ( which I do love) and more current problems such as revolution, terrorist, sleeping cell and assassins. Apart from this, it's a typically enjoyable WW romp. Also there's some heart and emotion regarding the taxi driver and his mute son. Linda Carter is a hottie, but it's her warm personality as well as her no-nonsense morality that is infectious.

Punching Above Its Weight

[darryl-tahirali · 6/10 · 6 March 2022]

The "Knockout" of the episode title refers to the attempt to neutralize key leaders of the Inter-Agency Defense Command by revolutionaries bent on "changing the world," but it could also refer to beautiful guest-star Jayne Kennedy as well as to, naturally, lissome lead Lynda Carter. Yet despite writer Mark Rodgers's attempt to inject knowing political references into his busy script, his story punches above its weight largely because of Kennedy's lightweight performance--lovely to look at but utterly unconvincing as the cop-turned-radical leading the revolution.

Equally unlikely is the chance meeting between her and Steve Trevor, in Los Angeles for his vacation, which results in his kidnapping by the Movement, the leftist terrorist group (think: Symbionese Liberation Army) that spares his life because--get this--he once saved Caroline Hamilton's (Kennedy) life when she was a San Francisco policewoman. Investigating his disappearance, Diana Prince joins forces with Pete Johnson (Ted Shackleford), an LA taxi driver and former Marine and race-car driver with a mysteriously mute young son--busy script, remember?--who helps Diana track down the extremists threatening the capitalist order. Or something. Of course there's a Movement mole in the IADC (more busyness) amidst vague allusions to 1970s political-paranoia movies such as "Three Days of the Condor" and "The Parallax View."

Moving through her second season, Carter maximizes her modest acting chops, her confidence as the series lead growing with each episode, with both her Diana and her Wonder Woman gaining strength as a result. And the presence of reliable television heavy Frank Marth, playing a professional hit man sent to eliminate Diana after the earnest amateurs fail, can only help, although Shackleford, whose game performance burnishes the narrative, deserves an opening credit. However, instead of a "Knockout," this ambitious but flawed suspenser barely notches a win on points.

LOOSE EPISODE

[asalerno10 · 6/10 · 13 May 2022]

The episode itself is quite weak and on top of that it has a repeated thing that was already seen in the previous season. A terrorist organization kidnaps Steve Trevor and throughout the episode Diana searches for clues to find his whereabouts helped by a nice taxi driver whose son is mute after the death of his mother, the boy in question starts talking again after a hired assassin kidnaps him, it seems that the writers forgot that the same resource was used previously in the episode The Rustlers, this means that being something repeated takes away any moving feeling from the scene. To make matters worse, there is no great ending here either since Wonder Woman ends up defeating the bad guys simply by convincing them that it is better for them to give up. A pretty bland episode.

Knockout

[Joxerlives · 5/10 · 15 January 2012]

We're off to LA and Steve get's kidnapped, of course! Here we have terrorism in it's recognisable 70s form, memories of Munich, Patty Hearst and the SLA etc still fresh. We also have a black female ex-cop which must have been a great rarity back then. Ted Shackleford will recur later and go on to soap stardom in 'Dallas/Knot's Landing' and 'The Young and the Restless'. We also have a character called 'Tom Baker' who was the contemporary Dr Who which may be just coincidence or the writer was a fan. 5/10, not much to recommend it really. I think one way for WW to have been a better series would have been to have had more powerful villains, the one's she deals with are just normally so lame they never seem much of a threat. You'd love to have seen the Joker or Catwoman or someone on the series but you would suspect they would have been too expensive.

Typical WW ep but some way old sets

[MiketheWhistle · 18 August 2018]

This is a typical WW ep, but several of the sets used are obviously from the 1942 motif and completely out of sync for the 1970s.